The Adventure

 What I know is that sometimes the best medicine for a man's heart, is adventure.

What I know is that he bought it from a government auction somewhere in the heart of Kansas.

What I know is that adventure spreads quickly, and his Dad flew out to the farm and his friends took off work and packed up their sons and they all piled into the van with a million tools piled into buckets in the back.

I know that they left on a Tuesday, slept in a cheap motel and picked up the beast the next morning.

I know that the breaks went out and they spent hours on the side of the road and every time I called to check in there was only joy in his voice.

I know they drove through the night, through a snowstorm, and drove back through the farm gates at 5 am on Thursday morning.

And I don't know any more details, of who said what, or what they ate, or if my son ever changed his underwear, or what they did all those hours on the side of the road, but I know that my Siah came in the front door at 5 am beaming that handsome grin of his. 

And as he slipped off his boots, he said it all happy,

"Mom, that was the best adventure ever."

He hugged me tight, said good night, and went to bed in the same clothes he had had on the day he left.

And everyday since, the Cowboy has been out there by the stable enjoying his newest adventure. :)

When I Forget

Sometimes I lose sight.

Sometimes the truly important skips by and I miss it.

I get caught up, and then quite frankly, I miss out.


On Sunday the oldest boy sat in church with the Cowboy and I. While the Word was spoken my little man flipped through the pages of his Bible each time he heard a new reference mentioned.

And then worship came around and that boy of ours, he just started belting out praise, and this Mama, those joy-tears started falling.

Because sometimes I wonder just how long his precious heart will be like this.

How long will he feel so free, so uninhibited, so-right-on?

We had just read it the morning before about David and the way he danced before the Lord as he brought the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. And my favorite part was when he put that wife of his right in her place, without a moments hesitation... "In God’s presence I’ll dance all I want! He chose me over your father and the rest of our family and made me prince over God’s people, over Israel. Oh yes, I’ll dance to God’s glory—more recklessly even than this. And as far as I’m concerned . . . I’ll gladly look like a fool . . . but among these maids you’re so worried about, I’ll be honored no end.” 
{2 Samuel 6}

As my boy belted out his song to the Lord, I couldn't help but whisper the longings of my heart...

Lord,
That this boy might never lose his innocent, beautiful desire to praise his Savior... ever.

That this boy would, by God's amazing grace, grow into a confident Christ-follower.

That this boy would never lose his passion, his fervency, for the One who loves him most.



About this time each year at the One Room School House I always find myself in need of going back to basics... Why are we home schooling? What do these five precious hearts need to know most?
How are we pouring in the things that matter, not to the world, but to Jesus?

Many years ago I came across these seven daily rungs...

They speak right to the heart of our home and to what we desire our One Room School House to be centered around. When our oldest was five I wrote out each wrung on an old piece of wood. 

Rungs...
1. Listening- A way of the Spirit
2. Love- A way of sacrificing
3. Labor- A way of serving
4. Loveliness- A way of seeing
5. Literature- A way of seeking
6. Language- A way of speaking
7. Logic- A way of scaffolding

{Read more here... It's truly great stuff!!!}

For me, this life comes down to one thing, 

Jesus.

I desire for everything to revolve around Him.

Everything. 

Even Grammar.

Because each task we attempt each day is really a condition of the heart. 

We do all things to the glory of the One who made us.
We do all things to exemplify His love towards us.
We do all things to know Him more and to make Him known.

So I ask myself these questions often....

Today, have I lead my children into closer communion with Christ?

Today, have I made a way for them to spend time at His feet?

Today have I been a matchmaker between my children and the Lover of their souls?

And the one of the absolute most difficult thing about being a mama, is that we can long for Christ so deeply for our children that it sometimes makes us physically ill, and they still might not choose Him.

And this week I've experienced it so intensely, that desire for the ones that I love to know how incredibly loved they are by the creator of the universe. Knowing that if we all truly knew, I mean really really knew how He gave His very life because of His unfathomable love for His children {aka US!}, then we would gladly long to live under His Word. We would long to live in obedience to Him knowing that His Word contains all that is best for us and our hearts. 

But the hardest part about loving on folks and longing for them to know this great love of the Savior is that you can long for their hearts to know, but you can't make their hearts know. Sometimes you can want something for someone soo incredibly bad, but that someone just might not want that for themselves. 

And truthfully, it's heart breaking. It's left me in tears each day for a week now. It's not heart breaking because of what I want for the person I love, it's heartbreaking because of all that Christ has done, because of all of who Christ is, because Christ gave EVERYTHING, and yet we can still so often find ourselves choosing self over Him. I've found myself there personally many times in my life and when I look back my heart breaks over those moments... over those moments where I was convinced that my ways were better than His. 

It's caused me to beg the Spirit to do what only He can do. It's caused me to pray like I haven't prayed in a long time. It's caused me to pour my heart out, raw and bare before the Lord and to beg Him to bring the knowledge of His EXTRAVAGANT love to the ones that I love. I can live in passionate pursuit of Jesus, but only Jesus can truly woo hearts towards Himself. It's hard to rest when you long for something so intensely. 

And these kids...

These five absolutely amazing souls that live under the farmhouse roof, ABOVE ALL ELSE, I long for them to choose Christ... and not because their Mama told them to, but because they truly know how much their Jesus loves them more than anything. Because they know that the Father did not even withhold His one and only Son, so why would He ever give them anything less than His absolute best when they are willing to live under the authority of His beautiful life-giving Word. 

And so, when we wake up to a new day of learning, if I can't teach filled with the fruits of the Spirit, then first things first, I need to ask the Lord to work mightly in my heart before I bother to teach another thing. Grammar taught with yelling, it's utterly pointless. History read in frustration will get these treasures nowhere. 

In this place, we need the Lord to do what only he can do. May I train myself to get less caught up in the to-do-lists and more caught up in Christ dwelling always and forever in these precious little souls.

Lord invade this farmhouse!

Do what only you can do. 

May these kids desire you their whole life long.


When church was over, I pulled that boy in close. And with the Cowboy and two treasured friends, I prayed with full abandonment for the one that I love, for the one who's currently choosing self. And I prayed for my boy, and thanked the Lord for the awesome praise that flew out of that sweet boy's mouth at church this morning.

"Lord thank you. May my son follow you all the days of his life, despite the many ways his Mama fails him, despite the many ways we all chose self over your precious Word. Thank you Lord for my boy's awesome praise to you."

The boy beamed. 

He always beams after I pray for him.

I kissed his forehead and we walked together down the hall to get the other kids from their classes. 

Psalm 73:26 "My flesh and my heart may fail, BUT the Lord is the strength of my heart and my portion forever!!"

His Love Was Not Cautious, BUT EXTRAVAGANT

"Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that."

Ephesians 5 (MSG)

I wanna love like this.

I want His kindness to flow off my tongue every_ single_day.

I want to laugh joy with these little ones every_single_day.

I wanna pour out words that only make their souls stronger every_single_day.

Valentines Day, it's this sweet celebration of His absolutely EXTRAVAGANT love for us.

It's that sweet love that compels us to live under His Word, under His wing.

It's His kindness that woos us to obey His commands.

 "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled."

Ahhh, such refreshing words to a Mama's soul. 

Sometimes I wonder if there is any other job out there that makes you any more aware of your inadequacies, than in the job of being a mother? What is it about those little people that make you so brutally aware of all that you just can't seem to do right?

But when The Complete arrives, OUR INCOMPLETES WILL BE CANCELED. 

Thank you sweet Jesus.

Just thank you.

This Valentines Day we bathed ourselves in His extravagant love. The kids each invited one friend. We turned up the music and spent the morning decorating the sun room together. And as we sat around the table with all their little friends, my Siah he talked to his sweet Jesus and thanked him for His amazing love for us. We played games and made hearts and ate lots of cake. It was simple and oh so sweet.

And we the Cowboy got home, he took us all to Fargos for dinner...

Going out to dinner... the absolute best gift for a Mama, any day of the year! :)

{I've never met a more loved on little man than this little guy. His Mama, Papa, and all his siblings can't seem to get enough of him. :)}

These kids, they crack me. They know how to live the fullest life and they don't even know what it means to hold back. 

These two crazy kids... the Mamas were in the kitchen washing dishes, when we peeked in the sun room and found these two treasures living it up and devouring a triple layer strawberry cream cake... who needs a fork when you've got a mouth full of perfectly great teeth?

And so we'll ask the Lord to help us out and teach us to...

"Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that."

Yes Lord, help this little farmhouse family, to love like that.

Simple Words

"Say only what helps, each word a gift." Ephesians 4:29

The world just might know by now how much this Mama loves Valentines Day.

I'm not married to a romantic, to a man who lavishes mushy words, or gives extravagant gifts.

I'm married to a man who's constant, consistent, steadfast.

I'm married to a man who does real. 

A man who holds hair back when I'm throwing up in the toilet. 

A man who takes me to the burger joint in town every once in awhile cuz he knows how much I enjoy a break from all those dishes.

A man who tells the treasures about Jesus. 

A man who wakes at 4 am to soak in the scriptures each morning.

A man who smiles at the millions of ideas I have of restoring this old farmhouse.

And together him and I and these five treasures, we do real-messy-glorious life, day in and day out in this place.

So when I think Valentines, I think about what's real. I think about extravagant love and how it really only comes from one place... Jesus. 

He is love.

His perfect love casts out all my fears.

His love has never been cautious, and has been nothing short of EXTRAVAGANT.

And thus, my great love for February and a season of soaking up His extravagant love.

One small way that the Cowboy and I do this each year is with a sentence.. yep, just a sentence.

Each night after we put the kids to bed, we pull out a little white card and write one simple sentence telling of something specific that we absolutely love about each of our treasures. 

{There are so many ways to do this. The first year we wrote on note cards. It was great except the cards ended up all over the house. The second year we made a Valentines tree. Another sweet idea, but with four (the littlest guy doesn't have his own mailbox yet)  kids and a card every day for 14 days, there wasn't a tree big enough to hold all the cards and not look bunchy. This year we've come up with plan C.}

We still put their notes in their mailboxes each morning. But this time around, I pre-decorated 14 cards for each kid and then tied them together with a piece of twine. That way they can keep all their cards in one place, there's room on our little tree for four sets of hanging cards, and the kids have enjoyed it much more because each morning, they reread all of the cards that they've received thus far before they read their newest card.

And it's the craziest thing, but all four of them light up. Rosy cheeks, grinning from ear to ear, all over a sentence on a piece of paper.  And it doesn't last for just a moment. I can hear them throughout the day telling each other the things that were written on their cards. I can hear them encourage one another in the gifts the Lord has given them. And as a Mama, I LOVE THAT! I mean, really, who doesn't want to hear their treasures speaking kind words into one another's hearts??

"Speak words that are helpful for building each other up." Ephesians 4:29

It sounds easy, but in this house, we have to be intentional.
In this house, we are asking the Lord to help us to only speak words that build, not those that tear down.
In this house, there's a lot of asking for forgiveness, because words can fly off the tongue oh so fast and before we know it, there's a precious little heart ripped right open simply because of  carelessness.



And so, Valentines is near and we pour out words that bless, each word a gift.


{BTW: This could also be a fun little way to encourage a spouse during this lovely season of remembering Christ's extravagant love. :) The Cowboy and I don't write our sentence for each other down each night, but when we're making them for the kids, we nonchalantly tell each other words that build up. I'd tell you some of the things that Cowboy says to this Mama, but ya know, this is a family blog. (weak smile)}

Happy Valentines Day from the farmhouse! :)